Journal of Geographical Sciences >
Regional changes of the severities of meteorological droughts and floods in India
Received date: 2009-09-28
Revised date: 2010-07-10
Online published: 2011-04-15
The most important climatological feature of the South Asian region is the occurrence of monsoons. With increasing concerns about climate change, the need to understand the nature and variability of such climatic conditions and to evaluate possible future changes becomes increasingly important. This paper deals with long-term above and below normal monsoon precipitation causing prolong meteorological droughts and floods in India. Five regions across India comprising variable climates were selected for the study. Apart from long-term trends for individual regions, long-term trends were also calculated for the Indian region as a whole. The results show that intra-region variability for monsoon precipitation is large and there are increasing numbers of meteorological summer droughts. Meteorological monsoon floods were found to have negative long-term trends everywhere except in the peninsular Indian region. The results overall suggest generic conclusions concerning the region-wide long-term trend of severity of monsoon droughts and floods in India and their spatial variability.
Key words： India; monsoon; meteorological drought; meteorological flood; trend
Indrani Pal, Abir Al-Tabbaa . Regional changes of the severities of meteorological droughts and floods in India[J]. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2011 , 21(2) : 195 -206 . DOI: 10.1007/s11442-011-0838-5
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